William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
A Man for All Seasons
Ouch, that reference hurts. Since it’s one of a number of movies where people stand by their principles and die, while those who happily compromise them live long and prosper. Which is all too often true, granted, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Oh, and that it portrays in a few lines what I didn’t do nearly as well in a novella of a post.
That’s right. No ads for 7 days. It’s a promotion to get you to subscribe.
It’s worth it, if only to get the tote bag!
Totes worth it.
I still don’t know why I was called in here, but:
- Agree with the OP (i.e., you, the Great and Pretentious SoaT).
- Lame pitting, bruh.
Or an umbrella with a picture of the tote bag!
You know, of course, that “Revenge is a dish best served cold” is an old, old aphorism. It’s probably French, originally, which makes sense because it’s about food. Calling it a “old Klingon saying” was a joke.
Anyway, as to the OP: you know, Jasmine, that Mangioni isn’t out there roaming the streets, right? He’s in jail. Guilty or innocent, he’s already being punished. So what more do you want?
People want a fast straightforward resolution to things. “ What else do you need, what are you waiting for, we know he did shoot the guy, who cares about the whys or how comes.” But you DO want to care about whys and how comes because not everything is just a simple binary and some day it may be you and you want to have that chance to prove your side.
A wise and eloquent post.
Not Klingon and not French. Was inwented in Russia!
Yeah. Jasmine was wrong with their post, and I pointed that out in the original thread. But they admitted that, and it was clear that their post was driven by emotion, not rationality. I don’t understand the need for this thread at all. The fact that this thread can’t stay on topic suggests others aren’t feeling too strongly about it either. Stranger looovvveeessss to pit people for pretty innocuous things.
It doesn’t. But they’re also not automatically just, or correct. Laws are there, perhaps, to protect us from the devil. But what if the devil is the one writing, interpreting, and enforcing the laws–what then?
There comes a point where the laws no longer suffice to keep the devil at bay; and at that point, disobeying the laws, or even tearing down the legal structure, may be necessary.
Whether we’re at that point is obviously up for debate. Watching secret police abduct someone from the streets of our country because of their political beliefs certainly forms an argument in one direction, and there are definitely arguments in the other direction. But I just want to be sure we don’t treat the law with a religious reverence.
A legal structure is only good as long as it serves to chain the devil. When the devil holds the chains, it’s no longer any good.
Might be true, but some posters can be some combination of oblivious, ignorant, or infuriating much of the time.
While I don’t have any posters on ignore, I have to admit Jasmine is one of those posters whose posts I try to gloss over because they will more often than not be some combination of ignorant, ill-informed, or aggravating.
While I don’t feel strongly enough about that to hurl invective (or at least very seldomly - it does happen on occasion now that I think about it), I can see how some of Jasmine’s posts or threads would be enough to tip the scales for some.
Or there’s a poster who has a long and known history and admittedly rather incredible ability to hijack and derail threads to make things about herself, no matter how strongly posters feel about the original thread topic.
I started this Pit thread after a moderator shut down discussion on @Jasmine’s statements (and of which this o.p. is a literal copy of that post) and before @Jasmine responded with an apology. It wasn’t intended so much as a specific excoriation of that poster as it was the general sentiment that if the justice system isn’t providing summary judgment and punishment on an arbitrarily short timeline that it must be “running amok”, instead of serving the expectation of meting out fair and reasonably unbiased decisions.
A brief perusal using the advanced search function shows that I have started a total of seven threads in the Pit in the last five years, which is scarcely an exceptional number. I do see that I started one thread specifically on your performative outrage over Bishop Budde having the gall to preach at Trump from the pulpit where she was giving a sermon which you apparently still have your nose out of joint over. So…whatever, man.
Stranger
you just said you started a thread based on my “performative outrage” and then linked to my mild post where I literally said, and explicitly tried to make clear, “I’m not outraged”. Very nicely done. So yes, innocuous to say the least.
Moi?
I stepped in this thread to back up Jasmine.
She was kneejerk in the FQ thread, its something we all do.
We are all at home judge and jury about these high profile cases. Don’t say you don’t do it. Its human nature to have an opinion.
I have my opinion. Jasmine has hers. You have yours.
If people choose to trash me in a lame pitting, that is their problem.
I’m easy to kick.
Jasmine did not deserve this. She recognised she was in the wrong forum for an opinion like that. Should be all there is to it.
But…Nooooooooo.
That is what I wanted to write after reading a couple of posts. Good I kept on reading before posting so I don’t have to write it: seconding it is enough.
And the saying about eating revenge cold is Sicilian. We Catalans thaught them that when we invaded them in the Middle Ages. We have mostly forgotten, they have not.
As Stranger explained, it wasn’t primarily a pit of Jasmine. The sentiments expressed are not uncommon and we need to push back, especially in a period where the rule of law is under attack from the highest offices of the land.